Jewish Holy Scriptures:Halakha/Aggadata/Midrash

The Talmud is the most comprehensive compilation of the Oral
Law. Throughout its many volumes, one finds the rabbis engaged in
two types of discussions, halakha (purely legal matters), and aggadata (ethical and folkloristic speculations).

The opening Mishna in the tractate Bava Mezia is a classic halakhic discussion:

"Two men are holding a cloak [and come before
a judge]. This one says: 'I found it,' and the other one says, 'I
found it.' If this one says, 'It is all mine,' and the other one says,
'It is all mine,' then this one must swear that he does not own less
than a half, and the other must swear that he does not own less than a
half and they divide it [dividing means that each gets half of the
value of the cloak].

"If this one says: 'It is all mine,' and the
other one says, 'It is half mine' [because he believes that they
discovered it simultaneously then the one who says, 'It is all mine'
must swear that he does not own less than three quarters, and the one
who says, 'Half of it is mine' must swear that he does not own less
than a quarter, and this one takes three quarters and this one takes
one quarter."

The Talmud's discussion of this Mishna is very
extensive, and directly and indirectly raises numerous legal nuances.
For one thing, since each party concedes that he only found the cloak
but never purchased it, what about the man to whom the cloak
originally belonged-shouldn't it be returned to him? We must assume,
therefore, that the cloak either had been abandoned or that efforts to
find the owner had proven futile. (There are extensive laws in the
Talmud dealing with restoring lost objects to their owners, based on
the biblical laws recorded in Deuteronomy
22:1­3.)

Secondly, it is no coincidence that the Mishna
portrays both parties coming into court holding the cloak. As a
rule, Jewish law accepts the principle that "possession is nine
tenths of the law." In noting that both litigants are holding the
garment, the text underscores that each has a tangible claim. If, in
fact, only one party held the cloak, the cloak would be presumed to
belong to him unless the second litigant could produce evidence that
the first person had taken it from him.

Third, why the need for an oath at all? Why not
just divide the cloak? The purpose of the oath is to induce fear in
the liar, to discourage him from persevering in his dishonesty.
Without an oath, a person might be more prone to lie, feeling that no
harm is involved, since he is not depriving the real finder of
something that had cost him money, but only of something he had found.
Rabbi Louis Jacobs summarizes the principle behind the oath:
"While a man may be willing to tell an untruth in order to obtain
something that is not his, he will be reluctant to swear in court that
he is telling the truth when he is not really doing so." In
Jewish law, perjury is a particularly serious sin, and outlawed by the
ninth of the Ten Commandments.

Fourth, why do the rabbis impose so strange an
oath? Since each litigant claims "it is all mine," why not
have each one swear that the entire cloak belongs to him? What is the
sense in saying "I swear that I own not less than a half."
There is a moral consideration behind the strange wording. Were each
party to swear to owning the entire garment, the court knowingly would
be administering a false oath: Two people would be swearing to
full ownership of one garment. Yet were each party to swear that he
owns only half of the garment, he would be discrediting his earlier
claim that he owns it all. That is why each party swears, "I own
not less than a half." This is the only oath that might possibly
be truthful, for the two litigants might have picked up the garment
simultaneously.

As for the Mishna's second part — in which one
party claims ownership of the whole garment, and the other ownership
of half — why the strange wording of the oath, and why give one
litigant three quarters of the garment's value and the other only one
quarter? The Talmud reasons: Since the person who claims that he owns
only a half admits that the other half of the garment belongs to the
first litigant, the dispute facing the court is restricted to the
remaining half. That half, the court in turn divides in half, so that
one party gets three quarters and the other a quarter.

This lengthy discussion about halves reminds me of
an old Jewish joke about a man who complains to his friend, "A
horrible thing. My daughter is getting married tomorrow and I promised
a five-thousand ruble dowry. Now, half the dowry is missing."

"Don't worry," his friend consoles him.
"Everybody knows that people usually pay only half the promised
dowry."

"That's the half that's missing."

Aggadata refers to all of the Talmud's
nonlegal discussions, including such varied matters as medical advice,
historical anecdotes, moral exhortations, and folklore. One
particularly well-known bit of aggadata is found in the
talmudic tractate Bava Mezia 59b. The aggadata follows a halakhic discussion in which the rabbis debated whether an oven
that had become impure could be purified. While almost all the sages
felt it couldn't be, Rabbi Eliezer, a lone voice but a great scholar,
disagreed:

"On that day, Rabbi Eliezer put forward all
the arguments in the world, but the Sages did not accept them.

"Finally, he said to them, 'If the halakha is according to me, let that carob­tree prove it.'

"He pointed to a nearby carob-tree, which then
moved from its place a hundred cubits, and some say, four hundred
cubits. They said to him 'One cannot bring a proof from the moving of
a carob-tree.'

"Said Rabbi Eliezer, 'If the halakha is
according to me, may that stream of water prove it.'

"The stream of water then turned and flowed in
the opposite direction.

"They said to him, 'One cannot bring a proof
from the behavior of a stream of water.'

"Said Rabbi Eliezer, 'If the halakha is
according to me, may the walls of the House of Study prove it.'

"The walls of the House of Study began to bend
inward. Rabbi Joshua then rose up and rebuked the walls of the House
of Study, 'If the students of the Wise argue with one another in halakha,"
he said, "what right have you to interfere?'

"In honor of Rabbi Joshua, the walls ceased to
bend inward; but in honor of Rabbi Eliezer, they did not straighten
up, and they remain bent to this day.

"Then, said Rabbi Eliezer to the Sages, 'If
the halakha is according to me, may a proof come from Heaven.'

"Then a heavenly voice went forth and said,
'What have you to do with Rabbi Eliezer? The halakha is according to
him in every place.'

"Then Rabbi Joshua rose up on his feet, and
said, 'It is not in the heavens' (Deuteronomy
30:12).

"What did he mean by quoting this? Said Rabbi
Jeremiah, 'He meant that since the Torah has been given already on Mount Sinai, we do not pay attention to a
heavenly voice, for You have written in Your Torah, 'Decide according
to the majority' (Exodus 23:2).

"Rabbi Nathan met the prophet Elijah. He asked
him, 'What was the Holy One, Blessed be He, doing in that hour?'

"Said Elijah, 'He was laughing and saying,
"My children have defeated me, my children have defeated
me.""'

The British-Jewish scholar and writer Hyam Maccoby
has commented: "This extraordinary story strikes the keynote of
the Talmud. God is a good father who wants His children to grow up and
achieve independence. He has given them His Torah, but now wants them
to develop it...."

A third category of rabbinic literature is midrash,
of which there are two types. Midrash aggada derive the
sermonic implications from the biblical text; Midrash halakha derive laws from it. When people use the word midrash, they
usually mean those of the sermonic kind. Because the rabbis believed
that every word in the Torah is from God,
no words were regarded as superfluous. When they came upon a word or
expression that seemed superfluous, they sought to understand what new
idea or nuance the Bible wished to convey by using it. Thus, we find
the following discussion on a verse from Genesis concerning Noah.

"This is the story of Noah. Noah was a
righteous and blameless man in his generation" (Genesis
6:9).

What words seem superfluous? "In his
generation." So why, the rabbis ask, did the Torah include them?

Characteristically, more than one view is offered.
Rabbi Yochanan said: "In his [particularly awful]
generation [Noah was a righteous and blameless man] but not in other
generations." Resh Lakish maintained: "[If even] in his
generation' how much more so in other generations" (Sanhedrin 1 08a).

Aside from the ingenuity of these explanations,
this midrash also demonstrates that a reader understands a text
in light of his own experiences. Take Resh Lakish's point: If even in his generation Noah was righteous, how much more so would he have been had
he lived in another society? Elsewhere, the Talmud informs us that
Resh Lakish became religious only as an adult. Earlier on, he had been
a thief, a gladiator, or a circus attendant. Resh Lakish knew
firsthand how much harder it is to be a good person when you come out
of a seedy or immoral environment. In his eyes, if Noah could emerge
from so immoral a society as a righteous man, how much greater would
he have been had he been raised among moral people.

Midrash continues to be created. For
example, Genesis 19:26 records
that when Lot and his family were fleeing the destruction that God
wrought on Sodom and Gomorrah, they were told not to look back.
"But Lot's wife looked back, and she thereupon turned into a
pillar of salt."

What possible relevance could this verse have to
our lives? A friend of mine was teaching this chapter at a home for
the aged, and the residents were debating the verse's meaning. An
eighty-five-year-old woman broke into the discussion: "Don't you
understand what it means? When you are always looking backwards, you
become inorganic."

Finally, in modern Jewish life, the word halakha refers to any issue of Jewish law. If a person wants to know the
Jewish law on a specific issue, he will ask a rabbi, "What is the halakha in this case?" The word also is used for the
Talmud's legal sections, the codes of Jewish law (for example, the Shulkhan
Arukh) or any of Judaism's legal writings (e.g., Responsa).

Aggadata, as noted, describes the non-halakhic sections of the Talmud, and the word aggada in modern Hebrew
refers to any legendary or folkloristic writing.

Midrash most commonly refers to the famous
compilation of Midrash Rabbah, a compilation of the rabbis'
comments on each of the five volumes of the Torah. But to this day,
you can hear a Jew who has some novel interpretation of a Torah
passage say, "I want to give you a drash [from midrash]
on this week's Torah portion."